UVM sociologist assumes high-level posts in native Senegal

UVM sociologist assumes high-level posts in native Senegal

Dec. 11, 2013

Moustapha Diouf, an associate professor of sociology at UVM, will be taking leave to accept a dual appointment in Senegal – adviser to the prime minister and president of the Millennium Challenge development project. / EMILY McMANAMY/FREE PRESS

Written by

Free Press Staff

After 24 years on the faculty at the University of Vermont, Moustapha Diouf suddenly finds himself with an opportunity that many of his fellow academics can only dream of: to help chart a nation’s course from a position in the top ranks of government.

The nation is his native Senegal, and in fact, Diouf has been named to two upper-tier positions: special adviser to the newly installed prime minister, and president of the Millennium Challenge Account, overseeing a half-billion-dollar economic development project.

Wednesday, Diouf taught his last two UVM classes of the fall semester, in Sociology 032 (Social Inequality) and Sociology 240 (Political Sociology). This week, he’s heading to Senegal to begin his official duties full time. He’ll be on an unpaid leave of absence from UVM that could wind up lasting several years — he’s not sure how long, except that that he does expect to resume his academic career here when his government service is over.

“The best way you can really improve your scholarship in terms of theory is to have a praxis in the field, hands on,” he said. “I will be able to do that.”

His appointments come at a time of heightened U.S. foreign-policy interest in Africa. Last year, Islamic extremists and separatists overran northern Mali, Senegal’s neighbor due east, raising fears of a new “terrorist haven” in West Africa. They were beaten back by French-led forces but not entirely extirpated from their desert holdouts.

Meanwhile, U.S. business interests have pressed the Obama administration to promote trade and investment in Africa in the face of major commercial inroads by China and other countries. In June, when President Obama made his first prolonged visit to Africa since his election, his first stop was in Dakar, Senegal’s capital, where he lauded the strength of Senegal’s civil society and its “continuation of democratic traditions.”

Political stability

With a population that’s more than 90 percent Muslim, Senegal is one of the few Islamic countries that the U.S. State Department can call “a strong U.S. ally as a regional, diplomatic and economic partner.”

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That’s from the department’s Bureau of African Affairs’ “fact sheet” on Senegal, along with: “The country shares many fundamental values and international goals with the United States, and it has been a symbol of democracy as well as ethnic and religious tolerance.”

Not so many years ago, Western observers were also calling Mali one of Africa’s democratic exemplars. That changed early in 2012 with the onset of armed conflict, a military coup and the rebel ascendance in the north.

Senegal, by contrast and unlike many other African countries, has never experienced a coup since independence (which came in 1960). Diouf attributes this variously to a strong military that ”knows their place” in society and to a political stability that draws on a functioning electoral system and that dates back to the first president, Leopold Senghor. (Senghor received an honorary degree from UVM in 1971, which Diouf counted in UVM’s favor when he was weighing job offers.)

In Africa, Diouf said, “We are one of the few countries where the sitting president was defeated by an opponent.”

That happened most recently in March 2012, when Macky Sall, a former prime minister, won a runoff election for president over Abdoulaye Wade, his former mentor. Wade himself had defeated an incumbent in 2000.

On Sept. 1, Sall named Aminata Toure prime minister. As justice minister, she had developed a reputation as a corruption fighter, having prosecuted and sent to prison one of Wade’s sons. As prime minister, she named a new cabinet — including a justice minister with a record of supporting gay rights — and a new coterie of advisers, including her longtime acquaintance, Diouf.

Steeped in politics

Diouf grew up in a political family. His father was mayor of Kaolack, a regional capital. He considers himself a leftist, and was active in socialist causes as a young man. That’s how he first met Aminata Toure, the new prime minister and now his advisee. “We were militants,” he said with a smile.

He studied in Paris (France was Senegal’s colonial ruler, and French is its official language), receiving a bachelor’s degree (1979) and master’s degree (1981) in sociology. He worked in Senegal as a researcher and as a sociologist for UNESCO, a U.N. agency, and received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Missouri in 1989. Of three academic job offers, he accepted the one from UVM in part because of Vermont’s proximity to Francophone Montreal and Quebec.

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Diouf maintains dual citizenship and has traveled to Senegal regularly, twice a year on average. Until his government appointments, his political engagement there had been as an intellectual, not in an official capacity.

“I’ve been involved in politics there for quite some time,” he said. “As a consultant, sometimes, publishing papers on the political situation in the major newspapers.”

Among the political leaders he kept in touch with is Toure, who spent part of her career with the U.N. Population Fund, based in New York. As chief of the gender, human rights and culture branch of the agency, she spent two days in Burlington in 2008, conferring with a rural-development agency and with students at Champlain College who had received U.N. funding to develop an electronic game to discourage violence against women.

Back in Senegal, Toure supported Sall’s candidacy and was rewarded with the post of justice minister, and her hard line on corruption earned her a nickname in the press, “iron lady.” Despite the sexist undertone of that label, Diouf sees an upside: “What it means,” he said, “is that she’s tough.”

As one of Toure’s two top advisers, Diouf expects to counsel her on, among other things, boosting the employment of youth and of women — two key priorities she identified in an October address to the National Assembly.

Diouf doesn’t expect to have difficulty trading the role of academic for policymaker.

“They’re not that different,” Diouf said, “because I’m a political sociologist. That’s what we talk about: defining some policies to bring about development.”

Another top priority for Diouf and his boss: “poverty reduction.” More than half of Senegal’s households are impoverished, Toure reminded the Assembly in her speech.

According to the CIA’s “World Factbook,” Senegal’s Gross Domestic Product per capita is $2,100, No. 193 in the world — just below Bangladesh.

As for the threat of religious radicalism that has unsettled neighboring Mali: Diouf points out that Islamic society in Senegal is dominated and regulated by four Sufi brotherhoods in the Sunni tradition that counter fundamentalist influences.

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Nevertheless, a May report by the Institute of Security Studies in Dakar concluded that Senegal is not immune from the spread of Jihadism in West Africa. “We have been tightening our security policy in the border,” Diouf said, “especially after what happened in Mali. It can happen anywhere... the risks are there.”

Hands-on development

Diouf isn’t the only UVM academic to take time off for government service. Huck Gutman, professor of English, spent six years in Washington as Sen. Bernie Sanders’ chief of staff, resuming his teaching duties this past fall.

Gutman, who speaks highly of Diouf and counts him as a good friend, said his own government service enhanced his understanding and appreciation of the world outside academia — a kind of reality check that informs his dealings with students.

“Moustapha has been a beloved teacher here for more than two decades, and has introduced multiple generations of students to African and international development issues, launching a number of careers in the process,” Tom Streeter, chairman of the UVM Sociology Department, wrote in an email. “We certainly hope he will eventually return to UVM and bring a stock of fresh experience and expertise to our students.”

Soon after he gets back to Senegal, Diouf plans to take a field trip to inspect progress on massive development project he’ll be overseeing.

“We’ve had some small problems with some of the contractors,” he said. “We have to move forward.”

Senegal is one of 38 countries to get U.S. assistance under the Millennium Challenge program, established in 2004 under the Bush administration. Senegal received $540 million in grants over a five-year term ending in September 2015. The focus has been on transportation infrastructure (roads and bridges) that connects rural areas to the cities, and Diouf said he hopes successful completion of the project will help Senegal qualify for another round of funding.

Other forms of infrastructure need shoring up, too — education and health care, for example. There are rural areas, he said, where “some people will live and die and never see a doctor. ... so we have a major challenge.”

Another challenge is to appraise the effect of development projects on women. Their economic impact is difficult to measure because it’s all rolled up in their combined roles as mothers, spouses, fieldworkers.

“One of the major problems we have with regard to poverty is its feminization,” he said. “We have to address that.”

In Senegal, as in other African countries, women are the mainstays of small-scale agriculture. Anyone visiting a rural area, Diouf said, will typically see men sitting under a tree, chatting, while women work in the fields.

“Actually there’s a saying,” Diouf said, “that women work while men gossip.”